A recent article on “How to turn candidates into a valuable future talent stream“, posted on recruiter.com, really hit home for Red Seal. The way that your company treats potential candidates impacts your brand. Simply put: candidates who are treated poorly talk. A single applicant who is frustrated with a company’s response time will let their network know. Remember each qualified applicant has dozens of co-workers, college alumni and industry contacts who will hear about how they are treated. Hearing a company is slow to respond may lead potential candidates to take that company’s name off their list of companies worth their time to apply to. So treat your candidates like gold, acknowledge every candidate that takes the time to apply within 3 days and respond to those that you are interested in within 5 days.
Provide a positive experience and they will spread the word increasing your pool of qualified candidates. Our suggestions for managing candidate expectations are:
1. Let candidates know their applications have been received through an auto-responder.
2. Thank candidates for their time and let them know how long the process usually takes.
3. Follow up – contact candidates either way. A simple auto-response email to unsuccessful candidates can go a long way in promoting a positive recruiting experience.
At Red Seal we respond to every candidate with a real person after reviewing their application. Yes this is expensive but it takes much less time than they have invested in researching if they should apply to your company, writing their resume and applying through your applicant tracking system. We are committed to working with our clients to speed up the response time and have it at the top of our priority list heading into 2013.